Three Years as a College Professor

This month I completed my third year as a professor at Clark College, located in Vancouver, Washington. Here are the courses I have taught:

  • HTML Fundamentals (CTEC 122)
  • JavaScript (CTEC 126)
  • Intro to Programming and Problem Solving with Python (CTEC 121)
  • PHP with SQL 1 (CTEC 127)
  • PHP with SQL 2 (CTEC 227)
  • Business Web Practices (CTEC 165)
  • API & Advanced Integration (CTEC 228)

In that time I have had the pleasure of working with 700+ students, received the 2013 Exceptional Faculty Award and have made many new friends and colleagues. I am also participating in several college councils and industry advisory boards. Add to the list three “30 Clicks” presentations at the Cannell Library.

My “encore career” continues to bring much joy and happines to my life.

Software migrations are like a divorce

Moving to another enterprise software stack is like a divorce:

  • it costs a lot of money
  • It never goes as planned
  • There will be a lot of yelling and name calling
  • It’s an emotional rollercoaster
  • Having to move out into a new “stack” is scary
  • Once it’s completed you feel great

And if you decide not to “divorce” you:

  • You will be miserable
  • There will be a lot of yelling and name calling
  • You won’t get to try out new things
  • Your users will continue to be miserable
  • You only live once

And that’s a wrap…

I would like to thank the following people for volunteering to speak to my Business Web Practices class at Clark College during the Fall 2015 quarter:

Week 1 – Craig Ebersol of Clark College / Heidi Johnson Bixby of Johnson Bixby and Associates
Week 2 – Tocarra Stark, Communications and Marketing of Clark College
Week 3 – Troy Uyan of Clark County
Week 4 – Derek Jesser and Aine McCarthy of Gravitate Design
Week 5 – Micah Godbolt of Phase2
Week 6 – Morgan McColum and Don Mills of Twilight Pizza and Scott Carden, Marblelife
Week 7 – Jane Croft of Anthem Medical
Week 8 – Dave Barcos of The Startup Brand
Week 9 – Aaron Hockley, Aaron Hockley Photography

All of you delivered invaluable information and experiences that each and every student couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.

On behalf of my students, myself and Clark College – Thank You!

Here is a description of the course from the course catalog:

Business Web Practices surveys business standards and professional best practices for professions associated with web content creation, web design, and web development. Topics include distinctions between freelance, contracted and salaried work environments, web production practices in content strategy, project management, workflow and version control, current practices in marketing, web analytics and search engine optimization, and legal and ethical issues.

During Week 11 of the quarter students will be delivering “Ignite” style final presentations. I’m super stoked to see my students presenting in this new and upcoming presentation style.

Something all Application Developers Should Consider Reading

Front-End Architecture: A Modern Blueprint for Scalable and Sustainable Design Systems by Micah Godbolt

With CSS preprocessing, icon fonts, grunt workflows, pattern libraries and JavaScript MVCs, the front-end workspace is anything but simple. This complex stack of tools can no longer be pieced together on a whim. Front-End Architecture needs and deserves the same attention given to content strategy, data migration, or server configuration. This practical book helps you explore all of these important decisions—right at the stage of the project where they need to be decided.

You’ll learn about the rewards gained from early, informed decisions, and the risks incurred if choices are made too hastily, or too late. Whether you are a front-end developer or a project owner, this book will inspire you.

Micah is a friend of mine who is the author of this fabulous book on front-end architecture. You can pre-order the book on Amazon or you can purchase the early release draft from O’Rielly. I highly recommend this book. I personally have learned a tremendous amount from it.

You can also find Micah on the Sass Bites podcast.

Winter 2016 Registration Now Open at Clark College

Registration for the Winter 2016 quarter at Clark College is now open. If you are a current student I highly encourage you to register for your classes sooner rather than later.

If you are new ew to Clark and are thinking about taking some classes this Winter, I suggest that you visit the college and meet with an adviser.

Not sure what courses are available? Start here.

With only 17 lines of code

Screenshot 2015-11-07 08.51.42

With only 17 lines of PHP code I was able to add a Slack “slash” command (/whatshot) to bring up the list of “What’s Hot” ideas from http://ideajam.net. To do this I used the IdeaJam JSON API and some PHP code to produce the list you see in the picture above. Slack makes it very easy to add integrations. In fact, I also coded another Slack integration for an IBM Notes customer that allows them to pull up data from their CRM database with a simple “/customer” command. That code was also less than 20 lines.

Want to learn more about the Slack API and how you can integrate it with it your apps? You can contact me or you can learn yourself Slack API.

PS – no server reboot was required to add the integration 🙂